Different
by Dahne
Summary: A bit of introspection from Milly, on the subject of Meryl. Shoujo ai.


She knew how to love a sister, and it wasn't like that. It was a little to the left from the protective pride when Kathryn threw out her lying boyfriend and she helped her clean up the bits of broken plate, a bit northeast of the glow of accomplishment when Robert showed her how to set a rifle on her shoulder and soothed her guilt when the sound of it scared the pigs, a step sideways from Dan patting her on the shoulder and saying, "Nice work, little sis."

She asked that they be assigned together, because she liked helping people who would never admit they needed it.

She'd been walking by with her arms full of reports when she heard her, demanding to be sent to May City to investigate earthquake claims.

"Look," their superior said, waving a folder so that the breeze scattered Milly's papers to the floor, "I'm not about to send a girl out alone and unarmed into the city. It's not safe."

"I won't be unarmed," she said fiercely. Milly was stooping to add paper back to her stack, so couldn't see what she did, but everyone in the office heard the hoot of laughter.

"A _derringer , _Meryl? You'd need fifty of those to stand a chance against an outlaw!"

"She won't be alone," Milly declared as she finished neatly stacking her files and stood to her full height, which she knew was intimidating because Darren had told her so. "I'll come with her."

The superior raised dark eyebrows that looked like caterpillars on a collision course and said, "I don't see how having _two_ unarmed–"

_Clunk.  
_

As paper settled in a gentle torrent around her feet, she dropped her stungun onto the desk. It creaked.

The supervisor pushed back his chair, very slowly.

"What time can you leave?"

That was a long time ago, before the Stampede, before the priest, before the inns they'd run from when the sun was already high and hot with the flapping of a white cape covering parts of a stream of curses and Milly trailing behind, noting all the words she'd never thought her Sempai would know and wondering if she'd ever seen her so happy.

* * *

She knew how to love a man, and it wasn't like that. The pain when she knew he was gone, was going to _stay_ gone, there was nothing like that when she thought of losing her, because she knew her Sempai would never leave, in the same way that she knew there would always be sand, and sun, and water if you dug down deep. 

For a long time, she had held her while she cried. She was small, but she was strong. She had touched her hair, and said she was sorry. It was better, by the morning, when Milly understood that the pain was a gift she could use to make sure her Sempai never shared it.

When Vash came back, bleeding and with a man in white slung over his shoulder, she cried in relief and embraced him and waited until his wounds healed to punch him in the jaw.

"There," she said, smiling fondly at the heap of limbs sprawled on the other side of the room. "Now, don't you ever make Sempai worry like that again, or I'm going to have to hit you very hard!"

He didn't, and that was good. Milly didn't like hitting such a nice person. He'd hardly even complained when she and Sempai came with him to the little house he settled down in. Sempai wasn't pretending it was because of work anymore (though it wasn't lying when they said they were keeping an eye on Vash the Stampede), and that was good, too. It was a nice place, though she had to ride for a long time to get to a town to send her letters from. Vash said that it had to be, and it had something to do with the man in white, who was conscious sometimes now. He'd said some very nasty things to her, until she told him firmly, but politely, that she wasn't going to put up with that sort of thing. Some people just had no manners.

It was little things. Like showing her how to make bread, when she attacked it with such intensity that her frown of intense concentration was soon coated in a thick layer of flour, and the contrast of her fierce Sempai and the childish domesticity of it made Milly laugh and laugh until the dark eyes gave up on glaring and white powder drifted down from her lips as she smiled. Milly wondered if she knew how beautiful she was.

Her Sempai's nose twitched, and she sneezed.

Milly realized that it didn't matter.

"Bless you," she said.


End file.
